The Center for Action and Contemplation of Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States for Monday, 22 January 2018 "Richard Rohr Meditation: God Is Merciful and Gracious"

The Center for Action and Contemplation of Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States for Monday, 22 January 2018 "Richard Rohr Meditation: 

God Is Merciful and Gracious" Copyright © 2017 Center for Action and Contemplation The Center for Action and Contemplation 1823 Five Points Road South West (physical) PO Box 12464 (mailing) in Albuquerque, New Mexico 87195, United States

---

Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation

From the Center for Action and Contemplation

"Week Four: Jesus of Nazareth:
---

"God Is Merciful and Gracious"
Monday, January 22, 2018

---

Most people naturally feel that God must be pleased and placated. The isolated ego cannot imagine infinite and gratuitous love. Until we receive the Gospel on a cellular level, the little mind processes reality in some form of “tit for tat.” As a result, people spend more time fearing and trying to control God than actually loving God. In fact, we do not really know how to love God. When one party has all the power—which is, for many, the very definition of God—the only natural response is fear, denial (practical atheism), hiding, or seeking to manipulate the situation. The flow of giving and receiving in a love relationship is not possible with such an imbalance of power. Love requires some capacity for equality and mutuality.
The only way for this pattern to change is for God, from God’s side, to shift the power equation and come to us in a vulnerable position. Jesus is the living icon of this power-shift: God becoming powerless in Jesus. God took the initiative to overcome our fear and hesitation. Jesus, the self-exposure of God (Hebrews 1:3), made honest, intimate relationship between God and humans imaginable! Seeing God in the form of a small baby radically illustrates this shift in power.
The possibility of a relationship with God was already planted in human consciousness with the early idea of “covenant love” as presented in the Hebrew Bible. A covenant is a sacred agreement between two mutually respectful parties. The God that Israel discovered and that Jesus incarnated was “merciful, gracious, faithful, forgiving, and forever steadfast in love” (Exodus 34:6). (This credo of five adjectives is often used throughout the Hebrew Scriptures to describe God. [1])
Yet, in the biblical stories (and in our own lives), God leads people beyond the idea of a bilateral contract in which we must earn, deserve, and merit (which we never live up to!), to an experience of pure, unearned grace—an entirely unilateral “new covenant” (Jeremiah 31:31 and Luke 22:20) initiated and maintained from God’s side. Knowing this, it becomes apparent that most Christians are still living in the “old covenant” (which does not mean Judaism, but any system of quid pro quo thinking). This is why so much of Christianity is frankly boring. Nothing genuinely new happens under the old covenant, only endless bargaining with ourselves and with God, leading to even lower self-esteem.
Free and un-earnable love is a humiliation for an egocentric or narcissistic personality. We have no control over it. Only a radical experience of grace can move us beyond the self-defeating and tired story line of reward and punishment, in which almost all lose. Only a deeply personal experience of unearned love can move us beyond a worldview of arbitrary requirements to a worldview of abundance and availability. It is indeed the banquet that Jesus says no one wants to come to, and most even resent! (See Luke 14:7-24, Matthew 22:1-10.) God has a hard time giving away God, it seems.
Gateway to Presence: If you want to go deeper with today’s meditation, take note of what word or phrase stands out to you. Come back to that word or phrase throughout the day, being present to its impact and invitation.

---

[1] See Walter Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy (Fortress: 1997), 216.

Adapted from Richard Rohr, “You Must Start with Something Positive,” Homily, January 11, 2015, cac.org/feast-of-the-baptism-of-jesusyou-must-start-with-something-positive/;
Hierarchy of Truths: Jesus’ Use of Scripture (Center for Action and Contemplation: 2013), CD, MP3 download;
Scripture as Liberation (Center for Action and Contemplation: 2002), MP3 download; and
Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality(Franciscan Media: 2008), 9-10, 159.

---

Thank you for being part of CAC’s contemplative community. You are one of 274,996 readers worldwide (as of January 2018).  
 

News from the CAC

The Franciscan Way: Beyond the Bird Bath

Franciscans never believed that "blood atonement" was required for God to love us. The Great Mystery of incarnation could not be a mere mop-up exercise, a problem-solving technique, or dependent on human beings messing up. Jesus did not come to change the mind of God about humanity; Jesus came to change the mind of humanity about God. 

(Richard Rohr)

Discover the radical Franciscan way in a self-paced, online course: February 7-March 27, 2018. Click here to learn more and register by January 24!

"Image and Likeness" 

2018 Daily Meditations Theme

God said, “Let us make humans in our image, according to our likeness.” (Genesis 1:26)

Richard Rohr explores places in which God’s presence has often been ignored or assumed absent. God’s “image” is our inherent identity in and union with God, an eternal essence that cannot be destroyed. “Likeness” is our personal embodiment of that inner divine image that we have the freedom to develop—or not—throughout our lives. Though we differ in likeness, the imago Dei persists and shines through all created things.

Over the course of this year’s Daily Meditations, discover opportunities to incarnate love in your unique context by unveiling the Image and Likeness of God in all that you see and do.

Each week builds on previous topics, but you can join at any time! Click the video to learn more about the theme and to find meditations you may have missed.

We hope that reading these messages is a contemplative, spiritual practice for you. Learn about contemplative prayer and other forms of meditation. For frequently asked questions—such as what versions of the Bible Father Richard recommends or how to ensure you receive every meditation—please see our email FAQ.

Feel free to share meditations on social media. Go to CAC’s Facebook page or Twitter feed and find today’s post. Or use the “Forward” button above to send via email.

Richard Rohr's Daily Meditations are made possible through the generosity of CAC's donors. Please consider making a tax-deductible donation.

If you would like to change how often you receive emails from CAC, click here. If you would like to change your email address, click here. Visit our Email Subscription FAQ page for more information.

Image credit: The Incredulity of Saint Thomas (detail), by Caravaggio, 1601-02, Sanssouci, Potsdam.

The dualism of the spiritual and so-called secular is precisely what Jesus came to reveal as untrue and incomplete. Jesus came to model for us that these two seemingly different worlds are and always have been one. We just couldn’t imagine it intellectually until God put them together in one body that we could see and touch and love. (Richard Rohr)

---